Precision M4600 Owners Lounge

Yes. You can use any larger adapter from any system in the Precision or Latitude E series lines. You can probably use a 130 watt adapter as well - but it might slow the machine.

 

You do know the recovery disk is the same as the one you can burn yourself using the DELL back-up tools on your system?

However, this is not technically the same thing as a full retail packaged WIN disk.

I also have a XPS16 system that I want to add a SSD to and DELL are quoting me $55.00 for Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit disk as I cannot do a back-up burn because my recovery partition has been corrupted.

If Microsoft do not have a problem with users reinstalling a legitimate copy of their O/S on a new drive why have they removed any download links to WIN7 from their website?

I can remember when you could download XP and maybe Vista from the M/S website but why have they stopped this now with WIN7?

 

Let's talk battery life. How do I set the system up to charge the battery as slowly as possible. I don't want it to charge in two hours - I want it to charge in 24 hours! Well, maybe I am exagerating, but I want it to charge more slowly than the "cram 210 watts of juice into it all at once standard charge rate." If possible, I also don't want the battery to be charged at all while its level hovers between 90-100%, to avoid overcharging and needless recharging.

"Why," you ask? Because, I actually want the battery to last more than six months, since an OEM replacement battery isn't cheap and currently Dell doesn't even have extras available if you are willing to cough up the moolah, because of a seeming M4600 battery shortage.

There are several easy ways to kill Li-Ion batteries:

1. Charge them quickly, forcing the battery to heat up during the charge (i.e., the two hour super-duper 0 to 100%, I hope this doesn't start a fire or blow up my laptop, charge).
2. Discharge them quickly. Not much you can do here, depending on your usage patterns.
3. Charge / discharge them frequently. There are only so many charge / discharge cycles they can handle, before they hold a very small percentage of their initial capacity.

So, I want to charge slowly. I have the time. I can do it overnight. I can do it when I am not using the laptop. What settings do I need to change to slowly charge the battery when the laptop is plugged in?

 

One hacky way to do this is to use a lower-wattage power adapter. I noticed the power adapter for my Precision M4400 charges my battery at around ~60 mWh compared to ~30-40 mWh with my former Latitude E6510's smaller charger.

You may run into throttling issues if you use an adapter that's too far under-powered, and if the system demands more power than the adapter can supply.

 

25% is great! You're not counting the "instant savings" in that, are you?

So far, with 4 separate calls, the best I've been offered is just under 15%. I have no need for 5 units -- it's just one for me.

Is there some trick for negotiating with the phone sales reps? Is there a thread on that somewhere?

 

Still, there has to be some sort of BIOS and / or DELL app setting that controls the rate of charge. Or, am I wrong?

 

no- instant savings not included. apparently 15% is the maximum a rep can give off without getting authorisation. to get authorisation they have to give a justification as to why they think a larger discount is necessary so usually they are reluctant to do this.

 

Doesn't Dell have any kind of battery/power management???

By comparison Thinkpads have excellent power management via "Power Manager". You can tweak many kinds of parameters to get the set-up just about anyway you want it.

In this day and age it's a big oversight if power management is not available.

 

Hi,

only an update on my order from Italy for those who are waiting and want this kind of news.

Sent from China on 06/07 and will be delivered in the next 4 days.

A very quick order resolution.

 

Bios settings [F2] checking "standard charge" instead of "express charge" would be a good place to start with slower charging rate

edit. under "power management" in BIOS settings